Obama: Reaching Out to Enemies

Our enemies like Obama's style. They think they can deal with Obama and make progress.

That makes me nervous.

Their idea of progress worries me.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Barack Obama's mission to Latin America was about goodwill, and he came home claiming progress, backed by leaders from the region who took a liking to his here-to-listen style. But the real test awaits.

As Obama himself put it, recasting a relationship takes not just words, but deeds.

So Obama embraced Cuba's overture to put every issue on the table, but he wants the Castro government to free political prisoners. He had attention-snaring handshakes and smiles with Hugo Chavez, but he wants the Venezuelan leader to stop being an authoritarian figure. Obama pledged the U.S. and Mexico are united on the drug war, but violence keeps on raging.

For now, Obama has what he wanted. A start.

"What we showed here is that we can make progress when we're willing to break free from some of the stale debates and old ideologies that have dominated and distorted the debate in this hemisphere for far too long," he said Sunday at the end of the Summit of the Americas.

The White House hopes it will all pay off — Obama's personal diplomacy, his promises to lead without lecturing, his willingness to hear leftist leaders gripe about the past.

AP writer Ben Feller says Obama "promises to lead without lecturing."

If that's the case, then he broke another promise.

Obama is lecturing, a lot.

Through his remarks to foreign leaders, his speeches on foreign soil, Obama has delivered plenty of lectures to the American people.

Every time he apologizes to world leaders for all the alleged damage America has done, all the misery and suffering we've cast on the people of the world, he's lecturing us on what our mindset should be when we think of our country.

Don't think we're the last best hope of man on earth. Don't focus on the fact that we've liberated millions upon millions of oppressed people.

In effect, Obama lectures that we should think like good global citizens, not as Americans first. We need to think that we've shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.”

That's Obama's lecture. The lecturing is reserved for us.

Feller writes that Obama is willing "to hear leftist leaders gripe about the past," and that's a good thing.

I think Obama is willing to do that because, at heart, he's a Leftist, too. No need to defend America for what he considers indefensible.

Obama should be touting the greatness of America, rather than allowing dictators and tyrants and thug leaders to trash the country unanswered.

...Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega, a critic of U.S. policy, said he found Obama receptive to dealing with the issues raised at the summit in Trinidad and Tobago. Ortega said Obama "is the president of an empire" that has rules the president cannot change. Nevertheless, he said, "I want to believe that he's inclined, that he's got the will."

Ortega is counting on Obama changing America. Obama's "got the will."

He wants to believe that Obama is ready to bow to the world and get America to bend over, too.

He hopes that Obama is the Neville Chamberlain of our time, an appeaser and weak.

(Read Thomas Sowell's "Pacifism on Principle is Suicide," September 23, 2001.)

...[Obama's] message: The United States should be a leader in democracy, but not a lecturer.

"And so if we are practicing what we preach and if we occasionally confess to having strayed from our values and our ideals, that strengthens our hand," Obama said. "That allows us to speak with greater moral force and clarity around these issues."

Obama deeply believes that America has not been true to our values and ideals.

He believes that we don't have moral authority unless we apologize for the many horrors he believes we committed.

I'm afraid that Obama is on the same page as America's critics, the tyrants and thug leaders. They're like-minded in that they believe America shouldn't be considered superior.

I don't see how lowering the status of America helps to raise the hopes of freedom for people throughout world.

Does Obama see America the way President Reagan did, as the last best hope of man on earth?

If he does, I wish he'd act like it.